When he called it wrong on Enda’s royal flush in 2010, he might have been sent to exile on Vincent Browne’s show for three years.

But since then Paschal has never called a hand wrong — to the extent that as Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure he is now dealer and banker at the biggest game of all.

Donohoe’s rapid ascent to power is all the more curious given that his impeccably polite persona and gentle lisp mean that he is an incredibly easy target for the satirist.

This was epitomised by the recent Justin Trudeau visit where he was eviscerated by comic sketches of poor Paschal politely acquiescing to the cruel scenario of being elbowed out of the role of
Leo’s chief confidante in favour of the Canada leader.

However, one of the best hidden secrets of Irish politics is the exact nature of the special relationship between Paschal and the Taoiseach.

Most believe he is Leo’s PJ Mara, though, obviously Donohoe and Varadkar are a very different odd couple.

They share similarities in that Leo is seen as the dominant one, while Paschal is the motherly supplicant who has to calm his boss’s facility to be carried away by wild notions of being a player on the world stage.

But, unlike Haughey and Mara, the reality of the relationship between Paschal and Leo is that they are very much equals.

Within the Cabinet, meanwhile, the feuding ministers in the court of King Leo are starting to recognise Paschal has subtly moved ahead of them in the great political game.

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However, whilst the defining public image of Paschal is that ‘it’s nice to be nice’, how accurate is this?

Many noted his status as the Game of Thrones-style ‘Hand’ of Varadkar during the FG leadership contest. With his ‘coffees with Leo’ moment, he expanded the minimum of political capital for maximum return.

After a golden run, though, Paschal may be coming to his point of trial.

For this is a budget set up as few before to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

Paschal too is learning that a finance minister has to do a great deal more juggling than the common or garden minister.

And perhaps he is learning a little late that while his predecessor glided like a swan, it took a lot of paddling.

Outside of the ongoing tyranny of our Eurocrat masters, Paschal has to deal with a Taoiseach who wants to spend and a Department that wants to save. He has to control new ministers such as the colourful Regina Doherty and deal with two roaring crises in health and housing.

That is before we approach ghouls such as Brexit and an Irish public who are waiting to see the fruits of our so far modest prosperity.

Above all he has to mediate with the new way his ‘colleagues’ approach him.

Suddenly Paschal lives in the different sphere of the designated successor, where the eyes of his colleagues look at him more coldly — because if he falls, others rise.

For now, envious colleagues believe he has succeeded Bertie not just in the constituency but also in his status as being the cutest, and the most cunning of them all.

Indeed, should Leo have to get the guillotine, some suspect it could be Paschal who will trot out chirping: ‘Good morning Mr Varadkar isn’t it a lovely sunny day, now just put your neck there please. Oops a daisy! There goes your head.’

First of all, though, he has to deliver a budget.

How that goes will decide whether, behind that pleasant poker face, he is the real deal — or Fine Gael’s Brendan Howlin.

Teacher Pay Bother

GIVEN their turbulent relationship, it is touching to see John Halligan race to the defence of Mary Mitchell-O’Connor over that bit of teacher pay bother.

Then again, maybe poor Halligan has simply surrendered to his inevitable fate.

Martin, however, was concerned by partition of a different sort via his query to the Tourism Minister about the exclusion of the Seven Heads peninsula from the southern leg of the Wild Atlantic Way.

A chastened Shane Ross swiftly told the incandescent Martin that all villages, businesses and geographic areas within close proximity of the route are, in essence, part of the geography of the Wild Atlantic Way.